The Millstone (20 page)

"One doesn't realize," she said. "The first time, I'd no idea. They wouldn't let me in with the first child. I had to get my husband to write a letter."

"And that worked?"

"Oh yes. My husband has some influence here, you see. Some. I don't know what one would do without a little influence." She smiled, wanly, and I noticed that she looked very, very tired.

"But how many children?" I asked. "More than one child?"

"It's my second," she said, "that's in now. My second boy."

There was a pause; she expected me to ask her what was wrong, perhaps, but I did not like to, and I could see that she was relieved by my abstention, for she went on, "It's the same thing with both of them. So I knew it was coming this time, I've known for years. It makes it worse. People think it makes it better, but it makes it worse."

"Why did you let him come here, after the other one?"

"Why? It's the best place, you know. They must have told you it's the best place."

"Oh yes, they did. But I thought they said that everywhere."

She smiled once more, her grave slow liquid smile, a smile not of amusement but of tired well-meaning. "Oh no," she said, "it really is. You're very lucky. They really are wonderful here. It's your first, isn't it?"

"Yes, my first."

"I wish you luck," she said, finishing her cup of tea, "with your second."

"I'm not having any more," I said.

"That's what I said," she said. "They said it wasn't likely to happen twice. And afterwards they told me the odds. Not that it matters. I'd have done it anyway."

"But how," I said, "how do you bear it?" I did not mean to say it, but I said it in spite of myself and then wished I had not spoken, for her manner, though kind, had been impersonal, a sort of cool human sympathy rather than a personal interest. She did not mind, however; she seemed used to the question.

"I don't bear it," she said. She picked up her spoon and started to stir the leaves in the bottom of her cup, staring at them intently as though fate were indeed lying there amongst them, sodden and dark brown, to be altered by
the movement of a tin spoon. "At first I used to pretend not to mind, I used to laugh if off to my friends and underestimate its gravity when talking to my family, you know what I mean. Extraordinary, the impulse to play things down, don't you think? But in the end I got fed up with it. I got tired of pretending it was nothing just to save other people's feelings. Now I don't care who sees I care."

She stopped talking as though she had said all she had to say. I too said nothing, awed by this testimony of long-term sorrow. There was still something in me that protested, that told me that it was not possible that a mere accident of birth, the slight misjudgment of part of one organ should so mould and pin and clamp a nature that it could grow like this, warped and graceful, up the one sunny wall of dignity left to it. For, no doubt about it, she wore her grief well: she spared herself and her associates the additional infliction of ugliness, which so often accompanies much pain.

We sat there for a moment or two, quietly, and I meant to say no more, but after a while my nature returned, relentless, to its preoccupations, like a dog to some old dried marrowless bone. I could not help but ask; I had no hope of an answer, having always known that there is no answer, but it seemed to me that this woman would at least understand the terms of my question.

"What," I said to her then, "what about all the others?"

"The others?" she said slowly.

"The others," I said. "Those that don't even get in. Those without money. Those without influence. Those who would not dare to have hysterics."

"Ah, those," she said.

"Yes, those. What about them?"

"I don't know," she said, still speaking slowly, her eyes still downcast. "I don't know. I can't see that I can do anything about them."

"But don't they worry you?" I said, reluctant to disturb her yet unable to desist.

With difficulty she began to attach herself to the question. She began to speak, and I waited with ridiculous expectation for her answer.

"They used to worry me," she said. "When I first started on all this, they worried me almost as much as my own. And I comforted myself by saying that nobody felt what I felt. They don't care, I said, or they would do what I do. But that's not true, of course."

She looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, for I agreed with what she had said.

"They do care," she went on, "but they don't set about it as I do. As time went on, though, and after years of this, I began to think that it was after all nothing to do with me. And it isn't, you know. My concerns are my concerns, and that's where it ends. I haven't the energy to go worrying about other people's children. They're nothing to do with me. I only have enough time to worry about myself. If I didn't put myself and mine first, they wouldn't survive. So I put them first and the others can look after themselves."

She finished speaking; she had no more to say. I was, inevitably, touched almost to tears, for it is very rare that one meets someone who will give one such an answer to my question. She had spoken without harshness; I think it was that that had touched me most. I had so often heard these views expressed, but always before they had been accompanied by a guilty sneer at those who must be neglected, or a brisk Tory contempt for the ignorant, or a business-like blinkered air of proud realism. I had never heard them thus gently put forward as the result of sad necessity. I saw what she meant; I saw, in her, what all the others meant. I don't think I replied, and after a while she put on her gloves and stood up.

"Good-bye," she said.

"Good-bye," I said. And she went.

It was about a week later that I was able to take Octavia home. She was by this time quite gay and mobile once more, and seemingly unaffected, apart from loss of weight, by her ordeal. I arrived on the morning of her release with a small suitcase full of real clothes for her to wear; I had been looking forward to dressing her in something other than the white institutional nighties the hospital provided. In fact, I had whiled away some of my vigil by her cotside by making her some new dresses; I had been taught at school to smock, an accomplishment I had never thought to use, but I do not like to let anything be wasted, and I had made her some very pretty small garments in various dark smart shades of Viyella. It had given me much satisfaction to make them; it was more profitable than jigsaws, for it actually saved money, while at the same time gratifying the need to do something mechanical with my hands, which otherwise occupied themselves by ripping holes in my cuticles or tearing strips off the wicker-seated chair I had finally acquired. I put her in my masterpiece to take her home: it was dark blue with a very small check. She looked very charming in it and jumped happily on my knee. I shook hands with all the nurses and even with Sister, who was glad to see me go. I got into the waiting taxi and off we went: I remembered the last time she and I had left the place together in this way, when she had been ten days old. I now knew better than to hope I would never have to go back again, for I knew that at the best she and I were in for a lifetime of checks and examinations, but nevertheless it seemed to me that I was more happy and more fortunate now than I had been then.

It was the middle of the afternoon: owing to the curious nature of the one-way street system, the quickest way to approach the flat was to go round Queens Crescent and then to the right off Portland Place. The air was bright and clear, and as we drove past the formal determined
structure of the Crescent, ever-demolished, ever-renewed, I suddenly thought that perhaps I could take it and survive. I had thought this before when drunk but never when sober; up till that moment I had been inwardly convinced that too much worry would rot my nature beyond any hope of fruit or even of flower. But then, however fleetingly, I felt that I could take what I had been given to take. I felt, for the first time since Octavia's birth, a sense of adequacy. Like Job, I had been threatened with the worst and, like Job, I had kept my shape. I knew something now of the quality of life, and anything in the way of happiness that I should hereafter receive would be based on fact and not on hope.

When we got back home and settled in, Octavia and I, I found that my initial relief was quickly replaced by new anxieties. I had foreseen this, so was not alarmed or taken by surprise; but nevertheless, it would have been nice to have had a little time off. Now that I was no longer concerned by immediate life or death, the minor details of health began to obsess me: I had been warned that it would be dangerous for the baby to contract the most insignificant ailments, and that any cold or scratch must be instantly counteracted by penicillin. Consequently, I spent my time watching her anxiously and hardly dared to leave her to the care of Mrs. Jennings, despite her eagerness to have her. All the normal preoccupations of motherhood were in me hideously enlarged, and I dreamed of them at nights.

I also began to worry about where I would live when my parents got back. They wrote to me about once a month, and when they wrote they always made vague references to being back for Christmas: not knowing my situation, they clearly did not think it necessary to go into any detail. I had made no plans: it was not in me to tempt fate by arranging in advance accommodation for myself and a
child who might well not exist, who might well by Christmas have been as though she had never existed. Now, though, it seemed that she was going to go on being there, and that I would not be able to present my parents with a desolate flat, carefully emptied of all nappies, bootees, plastic ducks and orange-juice bottles. The other possibility was that I should not move. I could always have stayed there and faced them, and asked if I could go on living there. There would have been room and they would have said Yes. But it was not in my nature to ask favours, and anyway I would not have liked to live with them, despite the advantages. Without the flat, my economic situation would be grave: when I got Octavia home, I made a gesture towards action by writing off to all my friends on magazines, to the firm of tutors I had taught for, and to various educational agencies, in search of extra work.

As it turned out, I need not have bothered. At the end of the first week of December I had a letter from my father, saying that they had decided to go to India for the year, at the invitation of the government. "Being so near anyway," he wrote, "I thought that we might as well continue on our way, without the expense of a return journey. We shall be sorry, of course, not to see you and Beatrice and the children, but you all sound very busy and happy, and can do quite well without us, I am sure." As I read this, I was overcome with relief at the unexpected reprieve. I had a whole year's grace, and who knows what might have happened at the end of a year? For one thing, my thesis would be finished and published, and with any luck I would have a reputable university appointment to confront them with by the autumn, as well as a small baby. I continued the letter, overcome with unashamed relief; my father went on to speak of his work in Africa, of various problems they had encountered, of the climate, and then, quite casually, in the last paragraph, the last sentence even, he said, "I had a letter from our old friend Dick
Protheroe last week, who says he has been seeing something of you." Nothing more: just that. After this all-revealing remark, he quietly signed himself off in his usual manner; yours ever, Papa.

I sat and looked at the letter for some time, pursuing its implications. It was quite clear to me, as it might not have been to others, that Mr. Protheroe had told my parents the whole story of Octavia's existence, and of her illness, and that by this apparently chance remark my father had meant to let me know that he knew. There was nothing amazing in itself in the fact that they had found out: news reaches even Africa, and sooner or later they would have got to know. I was more surprised, in a sense, that they had remained in the dark for so long: it proved that neither Beatrice nor Clare had told on me. Beatrice's reticence did not surprise me, as it is an ineradicable family trait, but I had had my suspicions about Clare and also about various stray acquaintances whom I had glimpsed from time to time in passing cars and in cinema queues. However, it had been left to Mr. Protheroe, who had considered it honourable to inform on me.

When I looked at the consequences of his information, I could not find it in me to regret it. For, extraordinary as it may seem, I was and am convinced that my parents decided to go to India and to refrain from revisiting England largely because they did not want to upset me and my domestic arrangements. I can see, objectively, how extraordinary it is to read such mighty meanings into what my father wrote, but nevertheless, knowing my parents, I am sure that I was right. They did not wish to cause me or themselves pain, embarrassment, or even mere inconvenience by their return, so they went to India instead. I think, too, that they wished me to understand this, or they would have gone, just gone, without mentioning Protheroe's name. His name was there to give me the terms of their departure: perhaps as the mildest of reproaches, but more
likely as an indication of the seriousness of their intent. Their behaviour seemed natural to me, for I am their child, but I have speculated endlessly about whether or not they were right. Such tact, such withdrawal, such avoidance. Such fear of causing pain, such willingness to receive and take pains. It is a morality, all right, a well-established, traditional, English morality, moreover it is my morality, whether I like it or not. But there are things in me that cannot take it, and when they have to assert themselves the result is violence, screaming, ugliness, and Lord knows what yet to come.

As a child, I used to endure any discomfort rather than cause offense. I would eat things I loathed, freeze to death in underheated sitting rooms, roast under hair dryers, drink in cafés from chipped and filthy cups, rather than offend hosts, waitresses, hairdressers. To me the pain of causing trouble was greater than anything that I myself within myself could endure. But as I grow older, I find myself changing a little. Partly it is because, with Octavia, I cannot inflict all hardship on myself alone: what I take for myself, she gets too. And so I was glad that my parents went to India; the physical comfort of their absence was greater to me than the mental disquiet of considering that they had taken so large a decision on my account. There was a time when this would not have been so; I sat at the kitchen table with the letter still open in front of me, and contemplated my growing selfishness, and thought that this was probably maturity. My parents are still children, maybe: they think that they can remain innocent. Or that is one way of looking at it. From another point of view, a more warm and fleshly point, they are perhaps as dangerous and cruel as that father in Washington Square.